To begin, I loved the exclusivity of the poem--there are things that only the author can do. Only she can enter the room under the wingback chair and she, herself, has the world with seven rooms inside of her.
And some of the imagery is just mind-blowingly gorgeous! "Pocket doors", "wingback chair", and "Flattening their wings, bats crawled under any closed door". I might have liked it better if they had crawled under her door, because then the bats could be after her specifically and that would go with the exclusivity theme.
The line that threw me off was the line before the last. "My dead brother swings me around and around--finally let's go". I was totally shocked by this and it sort of flipped the poem and made it dark. This line made me re-think my original, "I love this poem!" thought. It feels like the turn of the poem, but I thought poems only had turns when classics forms were used.
It flips the poem on its head because at first it seems so carefree and happy! There was summer, plants, books and dreams of flying--all of these concepts are happy, warm, and safe. Then again, there is a form of loneliness that accompanies having a room that no one but you can enter. Not to mention the back staircase. I think there is a weird connotation with the "back" door so to speak. People who are forced to use the back door usually do not want to be seen by others and do not have much of a choice. I feel as if they are ignored and purposely sent away. Then of course there is the image of a black bat trying to enter a closed space. A black force that is invading despite the desire to keep it out--"no one is safe"...yeah, that is death. This poem went from sunlight and book reading to ghost swing-pushers and death.
I am not sure if the end is supposed to be a hopeful one or if something crazy happened, like she decided to join her brother. I'm still caught off guard by the fact that she has a ghost-brother at all, who nonetheless is pushing her on a swing. Swings are pieces of summer and of happiness. The image of a swing immediately makes me think of summer and happiness but I'm not sure if the narrator is happy or sad. She could be either, for her brother's spirit is with her (or she is remembering him while she is on the swing and thus is happy) or she is sad thinking about how her brother is gone while she sits on this swing trying to reach him.
It's a great poem that is complex and is worth a read, I'll say that much!
